July 5, 2010

Date: July 5, 2010Distance: ~14 milesVertical: ~4400 feetTime: 7.5 hoursPeaks:Mt. Timpanogos (11,749 feet)Route: Timpooneke Trail, cutoff to Emerald Lake, snow climb Timpanogos glacier, south ridge to summit. Reverse on the way down with as much glissading as possible!

We had an awesome time hiking up Timp today. This one has been on our radar for a few weeks; every time we've hit a summit in Little Cottonwood Canyon, we've looked south and seen all the snow on Timpanogos, and have been hoping to climb it while there was still a chance to do a bit of glissading. Since we're leaving for the JMT later this week, this will likely be our final snow climb for 2010. We still can't believe how amazing the snow conditions are here in JULY... we haven't postholed once in the past few weeks (even in the middle of the afternoon on hot days).

While on the summit today, we were sitting just above the remnants of a large cornice, wondering how long it would be before it fell. No exaggeration: 30 seconds later, almost in slow motion, a HUGE piece of it broke off naturally and went flying 1500 feet over the north face of the mountain. It was both scary and totally cool to see that happen in person.

We'll be back on Timp for sure. Its a beautiful and huge mountain... the massif stretches over 7 miles long and towers 7000 feet above the valley below. Truly an impressive mountain by any route. Check out Summitpost's description and pictures of Timpanogos.

And now to the pictures...

The upper basin after a few hours of hiking on a great trail

Further up the basin... the almost sheer north face of Timp is on the left

Andrea hiking up to the glacier under the north face

Ready for the snow climb

We went straight up the glacier to the saddle, then took the ridge to the right to the summit

Heading up

Near the top of the glacier

Andrea reaching the top

The remaining ridge to the summit (which is the highpoint on the far right)

The ridge had a great trail (unlike everything else we've been doing lately!), so the difficulty wasn't there, but the views were amazing

The summit is almost directly over my head

On top... Emerald Lake is almost 2000 feet below, still mostly covered in ice

Summit shot... Provo below us, 7000 feet down

Notice the cornice to the left of the summit house...

A huge piece of the cornice broke off a few minutes after I took the previous picture while we were eating cheese & crackers

Utah Lake and Provo

Dropping into the glissade

Andrea glissading

Looking down on the upper basin. We were able to get about 4 more glissade sections after the glacier.

Looking back up at the "staircase"

Hiking back down into American Fork

Great shot of the south side of Little Cottonwood Canyon. We've climbed a handful of those peaks in the past month.